Theatre

Unlike any other holiday tale this season in Salt Lake City: The Lord of Misrule: Christmas Play set as an interactive philanthropic experience

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It is like no other tale Salt Lake City audiences will hear this holiday season. Televangelist Lucas Karol heals the “sick,” performs “exorcisms,” but most importantly, collects donations from his followers for these miracles on his daytime TV show, Scriptures Unscripted. However, during the premiere of Pastor Karol Presents: A Christmas Carol, a rowdy mob … Read more

Emotional and spiritual intelligence: The Utah Review’s Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2024

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But I grew up in a landscape large enough to hold what I felt when the world of people pushed me away. There, where badgers roamed, where herons speared small fish in shallow pools, I found my place. I took my sketch pad and tackle box to the banks of that small creek and washed … Read more

Two young reviewers rave about Salt Lake Acting Company’s regional premiere of Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus! The Musical!

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Keeping with the spirit of the Salt Lake Acting Company’s (SLAC) commendable tradition of featuring a theatrical production annually for young audiences, The Utah Review thought it most appropriate to invite two students from the Salt Lake Arts Academy to wear the reviewer’s cap, by attending the opening night performance of the regional premiere of … Read more

Immigrant’s Daughter Theatre-ThreePenny Theatre Company’s A Catfish Christmas is jolly, delightful but also gutsy, earthy ride

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Fresh holiday season fare is always welcome each year and it is not surprising that the new musical A Catfish Christmas, Immigrant’s Daughter Theatre’s latest creative venture produced with ThreePenny Theatre Company, is a jolly delight but is also an earthy and gutsy ride. Written by Ariana Broumas Farber with music and lyrics by Spencer … Read more

A glittering jewel for the holiday season: Pioneer Theatre Company’s production of Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir is exceptional two-hander

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For the impetus of his 1999 book, For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, Wayne Booth, a prominent American literary critic, recalled how in his sixties he stumbled over the hurdles of trying to master the thumb position down toward the cello’s bridge.  An amateur musician, Booth already had been playing for more … Read more

Immigrant’s Daughter Theatre, Lil Poppet Productions offer dynamite interpretation in stage adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery

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Misery, one of Stephen King’s best novels, is about an author’s deepest terror as he desperately tries to figure out how to stay alive, while he is imprisoned in the home of the woman who calls herself “his number one fan.” When the 1987 novel was adapted three years later into a film, directed by … Read more

Sterling cast propels excellent Utah premiere production by Pioneer Theatre Company of Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic

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“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read.  And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past,” James Baldwin wrote in a 1965 essay for Ebony magazine (titled, The White Man’s Guilt). He added, “On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the … Read more

‘One cannot fight what one cannot see’: Plan-B Theatre’s Full Color pops with heart, wit, poetry, intellectual depth, soul-bearing emotion

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At the opening of Full Color, Plan-B Theatre’s 34th season opener, the setting is pleasant and inviting: eight people enjoying each other’s company and feeling comfortable at home, outside a tent in nature. As each person shares a story, the production’s epiphany expands organically, one narrative at a time. While the audience is welcomed to … Read more

Ballet West gives Val Caniparoli’s Jekyll & Hyde riveting, spine-tingling Utah premiere

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One of numerous striking boundary-busting scenes in the riveting  Ballet West production of Val Caniparoli’s Jekyll & Hyde occurs just past midpoint in the second act. Hyde (David Huffmire) commandeers the attention when he arrives at Deacon Brodie’s Tavern, the after-hours refuge for the sophisticated Victorian gentlemen to indulge their libertine pleasures whatever they might … Read more

Eight BIPOC playwrights and eight doppelgängers: Plan-B Theatre’s 34th season set to open with Full Color

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Between 2010 and 2020, Utah’s population grew at a faster rate than in any other state and more than 52% of that growth occurred in minority populations. Today, more than 1 in 4 Utahns identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC), compared to 1 in 5 in the 2010 U.S. Census. As the … Read more